Analysis of heart, lung and vascular disorders by means of noninvasive auscultation has long been a very useful tool for medical diagnosis of ailments. By using a stethoscope, a physician would listen to the heart sounds, chest sounds or other body sounds to identify sounds associated with abnormalities. The most common of these are heart murmurs which, when identified, indicate specific abnormalities in the functioning of the heart. However, identifying specific murmurs, like identifying heart sounds, is difficult. Developing the skill to make a proper analysis takes years of study and practice. Acquiring expertise in identifying heart sounds and murmurs takes experience that many physicians do not have the opportunity to acquire, since many heart murmurs are very rare and are seldom encountered by general practitioners.
In addition, most of these body sounds fall either just at or below the audible frequency range of the human ear. This makes proper diagnosis extremely difficult for general practitioners and experts alike.
Due to the rarity of many heart murmurs and other body sounds, and because they often fall in the sub-audible range of the human ear, recognition and correct diagnosis of such sounds from listening directly to the body sounds is difficult or impossible for the inexperienced physician. Hence, there is a need in the medical arts for automatic display, measurement and manipulation of detected body sounds for aiding medical practitioners in the analysis and diagnosis of abnormalities. Thus, for a physician who desires to diagnose a condition from a visual display of body sounds, there is a need in the medical arts to provide a mechanism for a physician to precisely measure and study a variety of waveform features in a display of body sounds.